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When I share that I'm a disabled writer I often hear the same handful of questions, one of which is "what's the first movie you saw with a disabled character in it?" The answer is easy: 1994's Forrest Gump. The story of a mentally disabled young man (played by Tom Hanks) who plowed his way into several disparate historical events has become a bit of a punchline, especially when it comes to its use of mental disability (see my Tropic Thunder anniversary article). But where I identified with Forrest Gump wasn't with its title character. No, before I saw another actual person in a wheelchair other than myself, I saw Lieutenant Dan Taylor (Gary Sinise).

It's been 25 years since the first time I ever watched Forrest Gump, at an age I had no business watching it at. And in that time my relationship with the character of Lieutenant Dan has changed. He's still a character I appreciate, understand, and, at times, relate to. But he also represents the same static, boring tropes that we're still seeing in disability cinema today. So you can't say we've come very far.

Lieutenant Dan crosses off several of the boxes we see in disabled narratives today. Like your Bryan Cranston's and Sam Claflin's, Lieutenant Dan is a white male disabled late in life, in this case during the Vietnam War. The audience is introduced to him as a dominating example of masculinity. As Forrest himself says, he hopes he doesn’t “let him down” because of how heroic he presents himself. This heroism is all but eliminated after Dan loses his legs.

Vietnam stories are their own subgenre in the world of disabled narratives, with the bulk of them coming several years after that event, in the 1980s and '90s. In nearly all of them, men disabled in the war are bitter and resentful (another example is Tom Cruise's Born on the Fourth of July). They aren't necessarily bitter about the society that leaves them without shelter or accessibility, but how the average American has responded to the war themselves. In these movies, the disability is meant to show how callous humanity has become to veterans, not the disabled per se.

And yet for all the ways Lieutenant Dan is indicative of the lack of change in representation, he’ll always be my first; the first time I saw someone in a wheelchair who said a lot of the things I was feeling internally regarding my disability. Outside of the story, it was amazing just to see a wheelchair on-screen. Sure, Dan uses a standard hospital wheelchair that would provide no comfort or support for his body, let alone be difficult to wheel full-time. (No wonder he fell down ramps and almost got hit by cars!) It was obvious no one was actually disabled on the writing team, but for a child who’d only been using a wheelchair for a few years, something was better than nothing.

As I grew older, Lieutenant Dan’s cynicism hewed closely to my own. In one scene he recounts a priest’s attempts at comfort by reminding Dan that one day he would “walk” beside the Lord in Heaven and that “God is listening.” These moments, common in Vietnam narratives where antipathy towards society also manifests as hatred of organized religion, were understandable and relatable. Dan’s irritation at the ableist rhetoric of religion or an able person’s belief that everyone who is disabled will be cured upon death is understandable. (I’ve had several conversations just like this.)

Furthermore, the film takes a shot at humanity’s own cruelty and distaste for the disabled. During a scene at New Year’s Dan and Forrest are in a hotel room with two women. When Forrest doesn’t want to do anything the women get angry, leaving Dan to defend Gump. In a fit of anger, Dan falls out of his wheelchair, leading to a slew of insults and laughter from the women. At this moment, the audience is meant to be reminded of their own cruelty and how those with disabilities are belittled and pitied.

Of course, the movie ends up undoing everything it sought to deconstruct with the finale when Lieutenant Dan arrives at Forrest’s wedding with “magic legs” (i.e. prosthetics). The film still has to have him find his masculinity and hew his redemption alongside a return to normality, in this case being able-bodied.

Something was better than nothing, or at least that was my thought at the time. When you’ve never seen yourself represented you latch on to the first thing you see, for good or ill. Twenty-five years later I still put down Lieutenant Dan as one of my favorite characters, but I understand his limitations and failings. As far as disabled representation goes, he doesn’t posit anything new. His depiction is common. But in a landscape where representation remains so limited, the few good ideas Dan is given shaped who I was and reminded me of what I expected movies to push for in the future.

I'm a Rotten Tomatoes approved critic whose work has appeared on Roger Ebert, The Hollywood Reporter, and The Daily Beast. Writing about film and entertainment is a

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I'm a Rotten Tomatoes approved critic whose work has appeared on Roger Ebert, The Hollywood Reporter, and The Daily Beast. Writing about film and entertainment is a full-time job that permeates all facets of my career. I regularly attend the AFI Film Festival and in my free-time I run the women-run entertainment podcast, Citizen Dame.